


énouement

by chidorinnn



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: n. the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future and seeing how things turned out, without being able to tell your past selfFor one hundred years, the Divine Beasts keep the Champions that pilot them alive.For one hundred years, the Champions wait for the day the hero will awaken from his slumber and free them.





	1. Mipha

When the blight dissipates, a Zora falls out. The tiniest bit of recognition sparks through his brain: this is _Mipha_ , the Zora Champion that appears every so often in his memories, of whom King Dorephan and Sidon still speak so fondly even when they have little idea of whether she’d lived or died, all those many years ago. Link knows, logically, that he’s supposed to feel something here — happiness, nostalgia, even the tiniest echoes of a past he can only remember in fragmented pieces.

What he knows is this: that at some point in his life, the Zora before him was perhaps the only person he could truly call a friend in this world — that she loved him, so much that she was ready to spend decades in mourning because a Hylian’s lifetime is only a tiny fraction of a Zora’s, if it meant that she could be with him for even a short time. Maybe he’d loved her too — or maybe he didn’t, and she’d spent the past one hundred years fighting for something he’d never planned to give her, all those many years ago.

But she’s alive after all this time, and to dwell on a lifetime he can only remember in fragments feels silly and pointless in comparison.

She staggers, and he rushes to catch her before she can fall all the way down. Maybe he’d done this before, in a life he does not remember, or maybe it was her who would do this for him. He only has two memories of her, but an overwhelmingly heavy feeling washes over him, as she stirs in his grasp.

“You’re finally here,” she breathes. Logically, he knows that it’s the same voice in those two memories of her that he has, the same voice that has been gently guiding him through the Divine Beast for the past three and a half days — but it makes his eyes sting with tears he can’t explain.

Mipha. His first friend. His _best_ friend.

He sinks to the floor, and her along with him. There’s little room for logic in the face of emotions that he can’t articulate — in the tears that refuse to stop as something in him _releases_. There aren’t any new memories — nothing confirming that the Zora in his arms is who everyone has told him she was — but Mipha wraps her arms around him and pushes his head towards the blue sash draped over her shoulder, trembling with tears of her own.

“It’s all right,” she says shakily, running her fingers through his hair. “I’m here now.”

* * *

The Zoras call Link a hero, for bringing back their long lost princess. It feels wrong to celebrate — they’ve all forgotten that it’s his fault she was ever lost to begin with.

In the healing pool, by himself, he can finally string together his disjointed thoughts: Mipha is alive, despite everything Ganon had done to take her away. Ganon had failed, simply because his blight had been unable to truly kill her.

 _Maybe Mipha isn’t the only one_ , a small part of him insists. _Maybe Revali, Daruk, and Urbosa are alive, too._

It feels wrong to even imagine it — like just thinking it into existence has tainted it, somehow, all but guaranteed that it will never come to pass, and it makes his head ache. It’s an old ache, one that the healing pool can’t touch — yet another scar from a lifetime that continues to elude his grasp, slipping away through his fingers like smoke.

Then there’s a _splash_ as someone sinks into the healing pool with him. Mipha smiles sheepishly as she brings her knees up to her chest. “Sorry,” she says. “The healers said to stay in the healing pool, but they didn’t specify which one.”

He can’t help but laugh at that, though it’s more of a sharp exhale that sends a spark of pain through his ribs, from where the monster possessing Vah Ruta had hit him. This — he’s done this before. There’s no concrete memory of it, beyond the one from atop Ruta, but simply sitting here together with Mipha like this is comfortable in a way that almost nothing else is. It’s the same feeling that drove him to tears, when she first stepped out of Ganon’s blight — something he can’t put into words, but just as powerful as any of the few memories he’s managed to piece together.

“I think it was Ruta,” she says as she stretches out her legs before her. “Ruta’s been protecting me for all these years.”

He tilts his head to the side, and raises his hands. “But Ruta went out of control,” he signs.

“It did,” she says, “but it was only then that I really feared for my life.” She frowns, curling in on herself a little. “It was terrible… I think Ruta was trying to purge itself of Ganon’s taint, but…”

And this is what Mipha does not say: that if Link had arrived even a little bit later, she likely wouldn’t be here now.

"The others could still be alive,” Link signs.

“Maybe,” Mipha says, nodding. “If the other Divine Beasts are anything like Ruta, then it’s definitely possible.”

He knows, logically, that it’s too much to hope — and yet, he can’t help but smile at the thought of seeing everyone again, of that one memory he has of all of them coming together once more. All he knows are their faces and their voices, but it’s enough. It _has_ to be.

—but he’s so very tired, and the ordeal with Vah Ruta has left him feeling dreadfully weak and lightheaded. He couldn’t face another one of Ganon’s blighted monsters now, despite how every instinct screams at him to just _go_. Every old wound that he cannot remember is a scar that aches, along with his joints and his back, and it reverberates through his skull — a dull throbbing that starts at his forehead, cruelly tearing consciousness away from him the second he lays down to rest.

No, he can't make it to Medoh and Rudania and Naboris like this. It would kill him.

Mipha’s hand presses against the side of his head, pulling him down to rest against her. “Sleep for now,” she says. “Before any of that, your body needs to _heal_.”

He closes his eyes and sighs wearily. For an instant, everything tingles just a little bit more.

“Sleep,” she says again, running her hand through his hair — and his consciousness is gone, despite his efforts to cling to it.

* * *

It’s not a memory that comes to him in his dreams, but the faintest hint of one. There’s Mipha, and there’s him — simply sitting together and talking about everything and nothing, with no great weight of _destiny_ and _duty_ pressing down on either of them. It’s not something he can confirm is real, but he wants it to be. He’d like to think that, at some point, this was something he and Mipha had together — that this is something he can win back, if he succeeds this time around.

He carries it with him as Mipha hugs him before he leaves the Domain, her arms a comforting, familiar weight around him that his body remembers even if his mind is slow to catch up. “Be safe,” she says. “Know that you are always welcome here if you ever need to rest. I’ll be here — and when the time comes to face Ganon once more, I’ll be ready. You have my word.”

As he leaves, Link turns to wave at her, and at Sidon and King Dorephan and all of his old Zora friends that do not care that he cannot remember them. For the first time, his hundred-year-old failure doesn’t feel quite so heavy.


	2. Revali

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feat. the best bird dads

The first attempt at retaking Vah Medoh is a disaster. It ends with one of its laser beams hitting Link in the chest, sending him plummeting to the ground. Teba only barely manages to catch him in time, swooping down to catch him and doing his best to hold him in place as Link struggles to hold on.

There’s a difference between figuratively falling in battle and literally falling to your death. The former, Link has come close to more times than he can count; the latter still makes his heart pound painfully in his chest and his head feel oddly light, and it’s almost like those first few days after he woke up in the shrine — like his body could only just barely hold itself together — like the tiniest push would make it crumble into dust.

Link has never liked heights; so high up in the sky, dislike looks a lot more like fear. He knows from the two memories he has of him that if Revali were to know this, then he would never hear the end of it. He wonders if Revali is laughing at him now, trapped inside Vah Medoh as he is — he _wishes_ Revali would laugh at him, because it would mean that another Champion hasn’t fallen to Ganon yet.

He thinks back to one of his few memories of Zelda, as he sits huddled in a blanket by the fire under the awning of Teba’s home, and wonders if this was how she felt, all those years she’d failed to access the power that was supposed to vanquish Ganon. Waking to a world devastated by a calamity he’d failed to prevent paled in comparison to the prospect of Revali dying simply because Link had taken too long to save him.

Teba makes his way to him, his face stern as he crouches by him. “Let me see,” he grunts. Link winces, and shows him his arm. It’s a bruised, charred mess of black and blue from where it had received the brunt of Medoh’s attack — he must’ve used it to shield his chest from the worst of the blow, but the memory of it is fuzzy.

He gasps in pain as Teba dabs at it with a cold, damp cloth. Warm feathers land on his shoulder as Saki shushes him. “It’s all right,” she says gently. “It’ll be over soon.”

Link tries very hard not to flinch away as Teba begins wrapping bandages around his arm. There must have been something else on the cloth he’d used to clean the wound, some sort of ointment, because it _stings_. Theoretically, he’s been in worse pain before, and he’s failed before on a much grander scale — and yet, something uncomfortable and heavy settles in his chest, making his eyes sting.

( _“—you—you absolute_ bird brain _!”_

 _Link barely chokes down a laugh, because the last thing he needs is to offend Revali further when he’s already angry and annoyed and… whatever it is that’s making him scowl so fiercely as he wraps bandages too tightly around Link’s arm. It_ burns _where the wound is — a long gash running jagged along his forearm, with the beginnings of some foul-smelling gunk collecting near the torn edges of his skin — and not even pride can stop him from gasping in pain._

_Distantly, he’s aware that the wound came from a Lynel. He can’t remember why they were fighting one in the first place._

_"How do you expect to seal the darkness when you’re_ dead _?”_

 _It’s pointless to worry about that possibility, because in his line of work, the possibility that he won’t survive his next battle will always be there. He’s long made his peace with it — with the prospect that he will never again return to the Domain and spend another lazy afternoon with Mipha, that Zelda will never see him as anything but a symbol of_ failure _._

_It’s pointless to worry about it, so he doesn’t — instead, he refocuses his attention on keeping his strength up, because it’s the most reliable asset he has to ensure that that possibility never comes to pass._

_“Of course,” Revali scoffs. “You’re the_ hero of legend _. The world would end if_ you _ever fell in battle — so you’ll simply win every battle thrown your way, no matter what, because it is_ preordained _.” His gaze turns piercing for a moment, before he breaks it by turning his head abruptly to the side. “That’s just so_ typical _.”)_

“There,” says Teba as he ties off the bandage around Link’s arm. “We’ll redress it tomorrow morning.”

From behind him, Saki gently squeezes his shoulder. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asks.

—and as Link blinks slowly, dazedly at his arm, he finds an answer to a question he didn’t know existed in the first place: he _had_ died in battle, and the world had still moved on. The world did not end in the wake of the calamity he failed to stop, just as it would not if he were to fail again, now — because somewhere, there would still be people left, despite everything, to rebuild.

It’s why he’s here, in the home of a family of Rito he doesn’t know — why this family continues to go out of its way to help him fight for a world that all but perished long ago.

“Here.” Teba takes one of Link’s hands, gently pries his fingers open so that they’re cupped around a bowl filled with some kind of stew. “You need to regain your strength. When you’re healed, we’ll try again.”

—and Link fights down the urge to say that even if they try again, no matter how many times they try, they still might _fail_. Revali still might  _die_ —

“Whatever it is you fear,” says Teba, “you need to push it far from your mind. To dwell too long on your fears and insecurities is to cripple yourself; if you let your fear of failure overcome you, then you’ve already lost.” He makes his way to the edge of the awning, looking upward. “All we can do,” he says, “is give it our all. If we fail, then we fail — but it won’t be because we never tried in the first place.”

Link wants to protest, to say that failure is not an option and to even consider it is ludicrous — but the thought doesn’t feel entirely like his own, and it leaves him feeling like he’s floating, oddly disconnected from his body. Revali would laugh at him if he could see him now — call him weak, question why his role is merely that of _hero support_ when Link is clearly the inferior warrior.

—but Revali isn’t here. Not yet. Right now, there’s only Teba, and Vah Medoh raging above them.

So Link takes a deep breath and nods. Teba smiles, faintly, and pats his shoulder.

* * *

When it’s over, they sit. They lean against each other, both of them too tired and injured to hold themselves upright as they overlook the village below them. “It’s so… _quiet_ ,” says Revali. “Not that it was ever _loud_ , mind you, but there was certainly _more_ , if I remember correctly.” He points to the bridge leading into the village. “Back in my day, there would be no less than _three_ guards patrolling there. It wasn’t the most exciting job, but everyone trusted that if you were there, then you were strong… that you would fight for the village to your dying breath, if that’s what it took to protect it.”

Link watches the one Rito warrior pacing up and down the bridge, and tries to picture more of them — more Rito in general, in the sky and on the ground as they spring from Revali’s Landing and _soar_. They’re not _so_ far from Hyrule Castle that the calamity wouldn’t have dealt them a serious blow, all those many years ago.

Revali turns to him, his brow furrowing. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

Link presses his lips together, his hands suspended mid-air. This conversation had been easier with Mipha, most likely because Sidon had softened the blow with the more uncomfortable truths before they even tried to talk about this — but Revali doesn’t have the luxury of family that lived past the calamity to the present day, because Rito lifespans aren’t quite that long. Maybe Revali didn’t have any family left, when they’d first met all those many years ago — or maybe he did, and that history is lost along with the rest of Link’s memories of his past life.

“You don’t have to look so _troubled_ ,” Revali scoffs. “It is what it is. I would have thought that it would weaken you, but…” He gives him a wry smile, and it’s so jarringly unfamiliar that Link can’t help but wonder if this is the first time Revali has ever smiled at him like this. “I wouldn’t be here now, if that were the case.”

Link wants to tell him that he wouldn’t be here without him, either — because those updrafts atop Vah Medoh had saved his life too many times to count — because all he knows of using a bow mid-air is so unmistakably _Revali_ that despite how well his body remembers it in the absence of his memory, the technique never truly feels like his own.

“Oh, enough with the _modesty_ ,” Revali scoffs, disapproving frown back in place. “You’re the _hero_ , of course. It’s inevitable.”

“No it’s not,” Link signs — because maybe it _had_ been inevitable, that Ganon would return to ravage Hyrule, but their success in defeating him was never a guarantee. They _fell_ , each and every one of them, and Hyrule would be gone if not for Zelda fighting back for every moment of these past one hundred years.

They really need to relieve her of this burden soon.

“The others…” Revali says, slowly. “Are they…?”

“Mipha’s safe,” Link signs. “Don’t know about Urbosa and Daruk.”

He doesn’t expect it to put Revali entirely at ease — but Revali huffs out a small sigh regardless. “We can work with that.” He smirks — a warrior’s smirk, unmistakable in the face of an enemy they _know_ they can defeat. “Ganon _won’t_ catch us off-guard again.”

* * *

A week later, they sit at the Flight Range, watching as Teba paces between ranks Rito warriors younger than them as they shoot arrows at targets. “Watch your form,” he says. “A battle can be decided by preparation alone, so make sure you set up each shot to count.”

Revali scowls, though his brow twitches in such a way that Link can tell he’s trying very hard not to. Some of the warriors glance up at him every so often; when Teba catches it, he lightly swats them on the head. “I suppose they think they’re being generous,” says Revali. He’s only just well enough to be able to get out of bed and fly to the Flight Range, but not _so_ well that he can do much more than sit there, watching. “Praising failure, celebrating _mediocrity_ …”

That’s not entirely right, Link thinks — but before he can say anything on the matter, another Rito swoops down before them. “Pardon the interruption,” Kass says, as he settles down next to Link. Teba glances up at him, smiling and nodding, and Kass responds with a wave.

Revali hesitates, staring quizzically at Kass for a long moment — because unlike how it was with Mipha, the Rito Village he’s returned to is not the same as the one he’d left one hundred years ago. He scans Kass’s features, likely in an attempt to place his heritage, identify any predecessors that were once his own contemporaries.

“I’d heard that the heard that the Rito Champion of old had returned to us,” says Kass. “Forgive me, but I had to come see for myself.”

Revali shrugs, huffing out a sigh. “Well, I’m here in the flesh,” he says. “You might as well ask whatever burning questions plague you.”

Kass positively _swells_. “First… I would like to thank you, for all that you’ve done to protect the Rito and this world.”

“Why?” Revali snaps. “I failed. The calamity still happened.”

“And yet you’re still here,” Kass replies, calmly. “The stories I’ve heard were not of a battle lost, but rather the fact that one of our own had been strong enough… _brave_ enough to face impossible odds in the name of protecting this world.” His eyes drift towards Link, crinkling ever so slightly with a smile. “You survived, and so you have another chance at succeeding in your task. Can it really be called a failure, then?”

Revali looks downward, the furrow in his brow easing ever so slightly. “I suppose what you’re saying makes _some_ modicum of sense.” He inhales deeply, and hops to his feet. “Perhaps… I’ll make for Zora’s Domain. Reconvene with Mipha, plan our next move.”

Kass smiles gently, his fingers ghosting towards his accordion. Link wonders, abruptly, just how many stories of the Champions he’d heard — if the reality of Revali is anywhere close to the legends of his exploits. “For now,” says Kass, “there is a song I’d like to play for you, Champion. Will you listen?”

One of the young Rito warriors hits her mark. She turns back to grin at Revali, and though he may certainly _try_ to uphold the image of the proud, unflappable warrior, even he can’t help but smile at her victory and nod in approval.

“Oh…” says Revali. “All right. Go ahead.”

Kass smiles, and bows his head reverently. “Thank you very much,” he says, and begins to sing.


End file.
